hortus conclusus

I really like J-lo’s Deseo . I know we are supposed to scorn celebrity fragrances until they convince us otherwise with some exceptional quality or other, but I have liked this fragrance from the get-go. You know how a pineapple’s acidity makes your tongue tingle in that weird way that only pineapples can accomplish? Well, Deseo makes that same thing happen in my mouth when  I smell it—isn’t that strange? It is pineapple on me, but not in a bonne belle type of way. It is pineapple in a difficult, acidic, slightly green, sour sort of way. I really love the composition, actually—lots of painful pineapple sitting atop a lovely chypre structure, with a little green coconut thrown in to make consumers realize (if they haven’t already, the dullards) that it is ‘tropical.’ I don’t think of this as a ‘fruity floral’ at all in fact—more of a sour chypre. And then, there’s the bottle. I LOOVVEE this bottle. At first, I thought: tacky. Then I thought: hey, it’s kinda cool how it is desi...

I have to admit I’ve been a little nervous about reviewing this perfume for my Tauer giveaway (enter the drawing here ) for several reasons. A: it has been reviewed often by better noses than I (although I know that’s no excuse, since I seem to have no trouble reviewing other famous scents). B: it has such a devoted following that I might alienate my readers if I say something they don’t like (not a problem, I think, since I love it as well) and C: how can I present L’air du Desert Marocain in a novel light? I thought maybe I would wait until I go on my August trip to Morocco, then talk about LDDM through my experiences there. But then I realized I couldn’t really keep you all waiting for the draw all summer. So, I’ve bitten the bullet, friends, and am sitting down to write about Andy Tauer’s most acclaimed creation. To put this scent to the test, I invited friends over for a Spanish/Moroccan feast at my place. I decided I would wear l’air du desert all night and see how it playe...

Last night, we had a thunderstorm here like you wouldn’t believe, and because It’s still a full moon, for all intents and purposes, I passed a very sleepless night. The sky cracked with energy and moisture as I lay awake in our hot, hot muggy room, both of us naked with the sheets thrown completely off. Finally, unable to lie alone with my thoughts any longer, I got up and went to the couch to read. I spritzed on some Dzonkha, and the dry smoke/cardamom/incense/and dirt, my cat Oliver, and I all sat down together, waiting for the storm to break….. U2’s song “Electrical Storm” kept spinning through my tired head: The sea is swells like a sore head and the night it is aching Two lovers lie with no sheets on their bed and the day it is breaking On rainy days we go swimming out on rainy days, swimming in the sound On rainy days we go swimming out You're in my mind all of the time I know that's not e...

Welcome to the second installment of my new feature here on Hortus Conclusus , in which a perfume bottle sings a little riddle, and it’s up to you, dear readers, to guess which bottle of perfume is riddling. Which of you will be the first to guess this one, I wonder? This poem is an emulation of Dr. Seuss’s genius rhyme about the Flooboober Babboober bubs in On Beyond Zebra , one of the first poems I memorized as a child: If sometimes you don’t feel like channeling mother, put me on, for I smell like blubbery rubber. I’m no good to eat and I’m kind of a Goth, (If one says that with color that repels the moth) Although I am housed with luxury baubles, I’d prefer an alley where the streetwalker wobbles. I’m green and I’m amber as well as a powder, but my signature note sings considerably louder. If you know who I am, then tell me my name though my brothers and sisters sound somewhat the same, I am quite unique; unlike them, I’m no hack. My name, my dear frien...

IN my other non-perfumista life, I am writing a dissertation on the medieval English outlaw   tradition, so this hilarious post over at “Geoffrey Chaucer hath a Blog” really tickled my funnybone this morning. Check it out, if only to marvel that this blogger writes everything in Middle English! I think it is especially fun to think about Robin Hood in the summer months, when the leaves are green and the birds are singing, and it’s possible to imagine a happy life among the greenwood trees, living off the land and an occasional deer. Question: is there a fragrance that captures the summer scent of a ferny deciduous forest? My go-to Robin Hood perfume (yes, I have one, why are you looking at me so funny?) is Wild Hunt , but that isn’t really high summer. Suggestions, anyone?   Images by Wyeth and Pyle, courtesy of the Robin Hood Project

Asteres me'n a?mfi ka'lan sela'nnan a?^ips a?pykru'ptoisi fa'ennon ei?^dos, o?'ppota plh'ðoisa ma'lista la'mphs a?rguria ga^n. The gleaming stars all about the shining moon Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth with clear silver light. (Sappho, quoted by Eustathius of Thessalonica in the twelfth century.) Tonight, I, the moon, and Bois des Isles sit silently together, looking out over an illuminated landscape.  Perfect contentm ent and absolute restlessness vie with one another within my mortal frame. Just another sleepless night on the full moon. My husband took a bunch of really cool photos of the full moon from my dissertation advisor’s country home in Danby, New York. As I sit alone, awake, tonight, I think it is quite a nice series. But then, I’m partial. Sleep well, all.     Don’t let the bedbugs bite….. Credits: text from http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sa...

Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. SO says the freed Ariel, and so do I wish I could do. Alas, I am but a human and must content myself with sucking nectar from a different kind of vessel. And I found some interesting new nectar in an unexpected place this morning. A few weeks ago, Jessica said: “Ever since I started reading your blog I have been searching for scents that I like and find wearable (which, admittedly, are rather few). One of my absolute favorite smells and flavors is citrus (particularly orange blossom, can you recommend a good--and perhaps more widely available--soliflore? Serge Lutens is kind of inaccessible from my current location). I have always loved the marriage of citrus and "darker" elements wh...

Check out this amazing series of pictures of different kinds of alcohol under the microscope. (There are lots more at the linked web site.) What blows my mind is how much the images seem to express, in an abstract   way, each drink’s ‘personality.’ Each image really captures the spirit of the thing (sorry, couldn’t resist). I wonder what a similar series of pictures of iconic perfumes would look like….. Food for thought, anyway. Credits: Images of Margarita,  vodka, and tequila under microscope found at amusingplanet.com

I’m not some huge videogame buff, much preferring to spend my leisure hours reading, hanging with friends, or even watching shows, but once in a while I do enjoy a good zone-out on our Playstation or Wii consoles. The proble m I have with videogames is that they are often too violent for my tastes, or they require some sort of intense focus, which is about the last thing I want after a long day studying. To my great delight, I have found a game—or really, two games—on the Wii console that I really enjoy playing. Called Lostwinds and Lostwinds: Winter of the Melodias , this game allows you and a companion to wander through a Zen-like natural landscape on a slow-moving quest to do something or other (the plot’s just not that important, and there’s no hurry). It’s meditative, beautiful, and best of all, it is fragrant! Well, you can’t actually smell all the flowers in bloom, but you can see them release their scent and pollen in the air—it’s the next best thing to really sme...

  The countdown continues for my Tauer perfumes discovery set giveaway. If you are interested, I encourage you to enter the draw here . As its name suggests, Incense Extreme is a dry and pleasantly intense incense perfume, straightforward in its intentions, with a brace of bitter herbs at the opening. It then morphs into a very well-composed resinous frankincense and myrrh rounded out with what smell to me like cedar and roses—the immediately recognizable Tauer ones, which are distinct, as far as my nose can tell, from all other roses I have smelled. It takes on an almost tarry, leathery resonance in the drydown—at one point I was asking myself: is this more of  a leather fragrance than an incense one?  Like all of Tauer’s creation, this is well-crafted, interesting, and long-lasting, with a distinct roundedness I get from all Tauer’s scents—and I lo ve it very much. It is resinous and woody, but never loses a certain sweet floral note that keeps it approachable. I...

I love seasonal changes! In fact, I love them so much that I even teach a class about them at my university, called (admittedly a bit awkwardly) “A Midsummer Night’s Weirdness.” This class chronicles in particular the liminal moments of the seasonal year as celebrated in traditional societies, for long before Shakespeare wrote his play, strange things have been happening on the longest day of summer and the longest day of winter in Medieval European literature. Portals to other realms open up, lovers fall in and out of love, strange fairy women appear to choose a mate or a victim, and magic boats materialize at the shore, waiting to take an adventurous hero away on a voyage he’ll never forget—and from which he may never return. My class examines some of the texts which describe the otherworldly effects of these weirdest of nights, including Celtic, French, and Spanish romance, including works by Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, British ballads, ...

There has been a lot of bad press about Detroit and its environs lately, but I must say, it is a great place to shop for perfume. I have had a great time this past week exploring the little specialty boutiques, as well as the big stores packed with scent. It is a welcome change for me from my small upstate town, which is nice in its way, but has absolutely nowhere to sniff things! SO here, my list of must-dos in Detroit for perfumistas. First, one simply must head off to Birmingham, a gay-friendly suburb of the big city filled with locally-owned upscale boutiques as well as a few chain stores here and there. There you’ll find two very pleasant venues for sniffing. Well, actually, these shops are more than just pleasant. I had a great time in both of these charming boutiques, and found myself wishing I lived closer so I could enjoy the sniffings offered in Birmingham more often. The first, Lori Karbal , is  an adorable, well-curated beauty supply and clothing store. I spoke w...